UK police to examine Nigella Lawson drug admission

UK police will examine the implications of what Nigella Lawson said under oath about drug use.

In the witness box, the television cook admitted taking cocaine several times, most recently in 2010, and smoking cannabis.

The revelations emerged during a trial in which sisters Elisabetta and Francesca Grillo, former assistants to Nigella Lawson, were cleared of fraud. But it has served as a PR nightmare for Lawson.

“We will use specialist resources from within the Metropolitan Police Service to examine all the evidence which emerged as part of a review into this matter,” Commander Stephen Watson said. “At some point once that review is included, presumably in conjunction with the Crown Prosecution Service, we will determine a way forward.

“Part and parcel of that review we will undertake will be to look at all aspects of the testimony that was given in the trial, which is now public knowledge, and will reveal itself in the transcripts of the trial. There are implications in terms of what has been said during the course of that trial and all those implications will be taken into account in determining an appropriate way forward.”

Media reports there are suggestions of a determined campaign to smear Lawson and damage her career after the collapse of her marriage to Charles Saatchi, the art dealer.

Cooking series The Taste, which aired earlier this year in the US, is to be shown for the first time in the UK on Channel 4 next month.

Nine has the rights to The Taste, including local format rights, in Australia but has not moved on the series.

Source: smh.com.au